Wednesday, 18 May 2016

Adults Love a Child Narrator #2 - Girls

It is almost
a year since my novel Ways of the Doomed was published and I
am astonished at the mixed readership it has attracted. When the
marketing was first planned it was agreed to pitch mostly to the Young Adult
market. I have been visiting schools all year and it's true, the kids are
enthralled. When I wrote the novel I had no audience in mind, I just
wrote the book I wanted to write, so I am delighted that adults are also loving
reading the harrowing adventure of my young protagonist Sorlie Mayben.
This got me thinking about other books narrated by children that have an
overwhelming adult appeal, often because the subject is bigger than the
narrator’s story.

Now
it’s the girls turn to show that they are just as capable as telling their
stories for the adult audience. When I looked out my reviews I found
just as many girls stories as I did boys. Many of the reviews whether with girl or boy
narrators are set in Africa. This may be because I did lots of
research on Africa a few years back or maybe it is because African writers seem
to find it easier to tell harrowing stories from the point of view of children.
Looking at the list below, I find that most of the stories are harrowing no matter where they are set but they are stories worth reading despite that.

1. Precious by
Sapphire

Sixteen
year old Precious Jones, is illiterate, she is raped by her father, beaten by
her mother, let down by the system. When she falls pregnant for the second time
by her own father she is placed in an alternative teaching programme. Here she
learns to read and write. This is her diary. This brutal story is
not for the faint hearted, but we are kidding ourselves if we think it is a
unique story. Too many novels portray ‘poor little rich girl’ - poor
little poor girl deserves to have her story told too. Despite the trauma of the
tale this is an inspirational read.

2. Dora, a
headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch

Definitely
not for the faint hearted. I imagine teenagers hiding this novel
from over anxious parents. LGBT sex, drugs and enough swearing to
make Madonna blush. Oh but what a voice (or not) because this is a
modern telling of the Sigmund Freud case study and his treatment of a young
girl Ida Bauer (Dora) with hysteria which resulted in loss of voice. The
modern narrator Ida (Dora) ramrods her way through her own mental health
issues, subjects her psychiatrist to a treble dose of Viagra and videos his
subsequent relief. It is fun but with serious undertones. Her mother
is in denial of Ida’s father’s affair and Ida relies on her motley crew of
friends to help her get even, get better, get the hell out of there.

3. No and Me by
Delphine de Vigan

The story is told by thirteen year old OCD
sufferer, Lou Bertignac in a narrative voice that is unique and believable. She
befriends No, a homeless girl living rough on the streets of Paris. With a
naivety that is refreshing Lou tries to fix No's life. The fact that
the number of homeless young people currently living on the streets of Paris is
staggering makes this story all the more believable.

4. Where’d you
go Bernadette? by Maria Semple

This
book is set in Seattle, where everyone works or is connected to Microsoft, but
the fifteen year old Bee uses emails, articles, hand written post-its and
reports to try to discover what has happened to Bernadette, her wacky mother,
who one day vanished from Bee’s life. Bee is a funny, clever and very wise
narrator. I loved this book

5 5. NOS4A2 by Joe
Hill

Although
this book starts with the grown up Viv McQueen, most of the book is in
flashback. Vic as a young girl can teleport to the right spot to
find missing items just by riding her bike through a covered bridge. She
keeps her gift to herself and gets into all kinds of horrors when she meets bad
guy Charles Manx, the man who offers children a ride in his creepy car and
takes them to Christmassland. Very scary and definitely adults only.

6. 6. The Other
Hand by Chris Cleeve

This
is the story of another Bee, this time a young girl fleeing her African
village, which was cleared by soldiers for the oil companies. While on the run
Bee and her sister encounter Andrew and Sarah, a white couple who try to help
but with horrific consequences. When Bee’s sister is murdered Bee
travels to England to find Sarah. A harrowing story.

7 7. The Sopranos by Alan Warner

Five
choir girls from Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, a rural girl’s school, are let
loose in the big town for a night of drunkenness, debauchery and shenanigans. Their antics are hilarious and also often very sad. Not only is this a book
about teenagers written for adults, it was written by a man and proves that
maybe men are not always from Mars. Alan Warner’s Morven Callar was a great
female novel, The Sopranos is just as good. Brilliant.

8. The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Fifteen
year old Beth lives on an isolated Canadian farm beside a Native American
reservation that is being terrorised by a daemon. This becomes a metaphor for
how Beth deals with her violent father’s abuse and her treatment in the
community. The focus of action is a moody menacing wood, and characters are
both good and evil. The novel is sprinkled with recipes and remedies
from a scrapbook and is rich in sensory descriptions.

9. The Taxi
Driver’s Daughter by Julia Darling

Novel’s
written by poets are normally beautifully written and this is no exception.
This is a story of a family in crisis; two teenage daughters, a mother in
prison for shop lifting and a father who just wants to run away from it all.
Caris is fifteen and hugely affected by her mother’s imprisonment, she is
bullied at school and falls in with the bad crowd. The hopelessness of Caris’
plight is brilliantly portrayed. You just want to tell her to sort her life,
but the reader can’t and nor can she.

1 10. Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie

This
book won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was Shortlisted for the Orange
Prize. The narrator fifteen year old Kambili tells the story of her
family, ruled by a fanatical, misguided father who believes he is doing right
by God, by half killing his family. It is only when Kambili and her brother go
to live with a free thinking aunt that brutality and oppression of their old
life become apparent to them.

11. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

One
of the most famous child narrators, Suzie Salmon, uses her vantage point of
heaven to narrate her story. She tells the reader how she was lured into a hiding placed,
raped and murders. But her family don’t know and Suzie watch them as they
agonise over her disappearance and slowly disintegrate as a unit. A grim tale very well told.

1 12. The White Bird Passes by Jessie
Kesson

This
is a Scottish classic autobiographical novel. Little Janie MacVean is a little
girl who is happy playing amongst vagrants and tinkers, but eventually ends up
in an orphanage when the ‘cruelty man’ deems her mother’s upbringing unfit. The
novel is filled with colourful characters and an impressive writing style that
uses simple homely verbs which hit the spot every time. A delight.

I'd be surprised if you've never read a book with a child narrator, but if you haven't I would urge you to do so. They are more reliable and much better fun than adults.